An annual pow wow in honour of the old fishing village of Neerchokikoo. Photo courtesy of NAYA Family Centre.

By Michelle Tolson
PORTLAND, Oregon, U.S., Apr 29 2014 (IPS)

As a child, 78-year-old Yakama Nation elder Russell Jim was forced to go to a boarding school in Washington State and was beaten for speaking his language.

After returning home at the close of the school year, his aunt vowed to protect him, even if that meant “taking me to the hills,” he tells IPS. His father brought him to their local, all-white school and threatened to sue if they did not enroll him."When asking tribal people their definition of poverty, it is usually ‘having no culture.’ It is not defined by money." -- Janeen Comenote

While he retains his language today, he’s well aware that the ways Native American communities have been torn apart by displacement from government efforts to force integration into mainstream society.

“I notice when asking tribal people their definition of poverty, it is usually ‘having no culture.’ It is not defined by money,” Janeen Comenote, director of the National Urban Indian Family Coalition (NUIFC), tells IPS.

She says this is an important distinction in a demographic experiencing some of the highest rates inequality in the U.S. There is a perception that leaving reservations changes this.

“Disparity is disparity and both populations face it,” says Comenote of urban and rural tribal populations.

A report by NUIFC shows 20 percent of urban Indians live in economic poverty. However, compared to the general population they also face 38 percent higher rates of accidental death, 54 percent more diabetes cases, 126 percent more disease of the liver and cirrhosis, and 178 percent higher death rates related to alcohol use.

Yakama Elder Russell Jim. Credit: Jason E. Kaplan/IPS

Native American children have the highest rates of foster care placement of all minority groups according to another report. Kings County and Multnomah County in Washington and Oregon States are among the highest in the U.S. at seven to five times disproportionate to Native populations.

Matt Morton, executive director of Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) in Portland, Oregon, tells IPS over 20 percent of native children are in foster care in Multnomah County.

“Our families experience a much higher rate of removal compared to white families in similar situations. We know this is due to biases and expectations of how Native Americans should act when living in severe conditions of poverty. This has not changed [since the Indian Child Welfare Act].”

Before its creation in 1978, the rate was 25 percent.

How do indigenous people live in poverty? According to NUIFC, urban native people are 1.8 times more likely have no plumbing, twice as likely to have no kitchen, three times as likely to have no phone and three times more likely to be homeless than the general population.

On reservations they might live in large, extended families. Yakama fisherwoman Caroline Looney Hunt, age 54, tells IPS her mother adopted children informally despite having 11 of her own.

“My mom used to say ‘watch out for the White Man.’ I asked ‘which one?’ She said ‘DSHS [Department of Social and Health Services] – they steal your kids.’

“They would try to go back to their families after they turned 18. But after being away from their culture, they would see how we lived and wouldn’t want to stay. Our culture is not about material things, it is about family.”

Today according to the law, native children are supposed to stay within their community for foster care services, but sometimes children are placed into general population services because they are not enrolled in the tribe.

Families struggling with alcoholism might forget to enroll their children. “They told me children who are not enrolled are recorded as white,” says Looney Hunt, who had to intercede when her granddaughter was placed in foster care outside her community.

Russell Jim says the introduction of alcohol to the Yakama has been devastating, while the loss of their traditional hunting and gathering places to hydroelectric dams and the Hanford nuclear reservation has further impacted their health.

“We are not genetically adapted to the foods or alcohol of the settlers,” he says. He thinks this is why diabetes and alcoholism plague the tribe.

Members of the NAYA community in Portland, Oregon. Photo courtesy of NAYA Family Centre.

While reservation community members like Russell Jim and Looney Hunt work to preserve their cultural traditions, urban tribal organisations like NAYA focus on reintroducing cultural value systems.

Morton thinks regaining the traditional diet will be a “pivotal point” for Native communities in the Pacific Northwest, both urban and rural. They are working to restore a section of land forcibly ceded to the European settlers in north Portland.

The last indigenous person was removed in 1906 from the ancient fishing village of “Neerchokikoo,” which morphed into an industrial area. NAYA centre, now located in the area, has worked with Verde organisation to restore a former waste dump into a neighbourhood park.

“What we are doing is creating livable neighbourhoods and regaining cultural connections through the restoration of natural areas and reintroducing native plants and building open spaces for our community to gather,” says Morton of Cully Park.

NAYA uses the Relational Worldview Model created by the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA). The Eurocentric linear worldview is “rooted in the logic that says cause has to come before effect.”

In contrast, “the relational worldview sees life as harmonious relationships where health is achieved by maintaining balance between the many interrelating factors in one’s circle of life,” says NICWA’s website.

“I’ve noticed,” says Comenote, “a difference between Eurocentric and tribal institutions. Eurocentric institutions ask ‘do they have enough money?’ Tribal institutions ask ‘does the child have a culture?’ They also ask, how do they help each other?”

Many tribal people were forced out of their reservations during the 1950s and 1960s federal relocation period and sent to live in cities, creating a Native American diaspora. Morton explains “there were many relocation spots around the country and Portland was but one.”

The American Indian Movement of the 1960’s and 70’s fought to reverse the policy but many tribes lost federal recognition and sovereign status, according to NUIFC. Relocated tribe members also intermarried with other races after their forced removal. However, tribe members have also relocated to cities to pursue opportunities not available on reservations.

Comenote says urban tribal organizations function as “multi tribal embassies.” NAYA’s members come from 380 different tribes and Portland has the ninth largest urban Indian population in the U.S.

“NAYA is in the process of creating an intergenerational community, Generations, by partnering with the City of Portland and the Portland Public Schools system,” Oscar Arana, director of strategic development and communications, tells IPS.

The project will create affordable housing for foster parents seeking to adopt foster youth and Elders who want to be part of the community and volunteer their time to support the families.

“There are many positive outcomes that occur when three generations come together to support each other including improved health, education, and sense of purpose and meaning. The project earned an enthusiastic endorsement by Governor John Kitzhaber.”

Only four out of 10 indigenous youth graduate from high school in Portland public schools.

“When first assuring the safety of kids, then we can help the parents get housing, help with education and offer assistance,” Morton explains.

At the perimetre of Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State. Credit: Jason E. Kaplan/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
YAKAMA NATION, Washington State, U.S. , Apr 14 2014 (IPS)

The Department of Energy (DOE), politicians and CEOs were discussing how to warn generations 125,000 years in the future about the radioactive waste at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, considered the most polluted site in the U.S., when Native American anti-nuclear activist Russell Jim interrupted their musings: “We’ll tell them.”

He tells IPS “they looked around and saw me. I said, ‘We’ve been here since the beginning of time, so we will be here then.’ That was when they knew they’d have a fight on their hands.”“Helen Caldicott told us in 1997 that if we eat fish from the Columbia, we’ll die." -- Yakama Elder Russell Jim

With his long braids, the 78-year-old director of the Environmental Restoration & Waste Management Programme (ERWM) for the Yakama tribes cuts a striking figure, sitting calmly in his office located on the arid lands of his sovereign nation.

The Yakama Reservation in southeast Washington has 1.2 million acres with 10,000 federally recognised tribal members and an estimated 12,000 feral horses roaming the desert steppe. Down from the 12 million acres ceded by force to the U.S. government in 1855, it is just 20 miles west from the Hanford nuclear site.

Though the nuclear arms race ended in 1989, radioactive waste is the legacy of the various sites of the former Manhattan Project spread across the U.S.

While the Yakama have successfully protected their sacred fishing grounds from becoming a repository for nuclear waste from other project sites by invoking the treaty of 1855 which promises access to their “usual and accustomed places,” Hanford is far from clean, though the DOE promised to restore the land.

“The DOE is trying to reclassify the waste as ‘low activity.’ They are trying to leave it here and bury it in shallow pits. Scientists are saying that it needs to be buried deep under the ground,” Jim explains.

Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge watchdog group tells IPS “it is a battle for Washington State and the tribes to get the feds to keep their promise to remove the waste. There are 42 miles of trenches that are 15 feet wide and 20 feet deep full of boxes, crates and vials of waste in unlined trenches.”

There are a further 177 underground tanks of radioactive waste and six are leaking. Waste is supposed to be moved within 24 hours from leak detection or whenever is “practicable” but the contractors say there is not enough space.

Three whistleblowers working on the cleanup raised concerns and were fired. Closely followed by a local news station, it is an issue that is largely neglected by mainstream media and the Yakama’s fight seems all but ignored.

“We used to have a media person on staff but the DOE says there is no need as ‘everything is going fine,” says Russell Jim. His department lost 80 percent of its funding in 2012 after cutbacks. His tribe doesn’t fund ERWM, the DOE does. “The DOE crapped it up, so they should pay for it.”

Russell Jim, Yakama Elder and Director of Environmental Restoration & Waste Management Program (ERWM) for the Yakama Nation. Credit: Jason E. Kaplan/IPS

But everything is not fine. With radioactive groundwater plumes making their way toward the river, the Yakama and watchdog groups says it is an emergency. Some plumes are just 400 yards from the river where the tribe accesses Hanford Reach monument, according to treaty rights.

Hanford Reach nature reserve, a buffer zone for the site, is the Columbia’s largest spawning grounds for wild fall Chinook salmon

Washington State reports highly toxic radioactive contamination from uranium, strontium 90 and chromium in the ground water has already entered the Columbia River.

“There are about 150 groundwater ‘upwellings’ in the gravel of the Columbia River coming from Hanford that young salmon swim around,” explains Russell Jim.

“Helen Caldicott [founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility] told us in 1997 that if we eat fish from the Columbia, we’ll die,” he adds.

Callie Ridolfi, environmental consultant to the Yakama, tells IPS their diet of 150 to 519 grammes of fish a day, nearly double regional tribal averages and far greater than the mainstream population, puts them at greater risk, with as much as a one in 50 chance of getting cancer from eating resident fish.

Migratory fish like salmon that live in the ocean most of their lives are less affected, unlike resident fish.

According to a 2002 EPA study on fish contaminants, resident sturgeon and white fish from Hanford Reach had some of the highest levels of PCBs.

Last year, Washington and Oregon states released an advisory for the 150-mile heavily dammed stretch of the Columbia from Bonneville to McNary Dam to limit eating resident fish to once a week due to PCB toxins.

Fisheries manager at Mike Matylewich at Columbia River Inter Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC), says, “Lubricants containing PCBs were used for years, particularly in transformers, at hydroelectric dams because of the ability to withstand high temperatures.

“The ability to withstand high temperatures contributes to their persistence in the environment as a legacy contaminant,” he tells IPS.

While the advisory does not include the Hanford Reach, the longest undammed stretch of the Columbia, Russell Jim doubts it’s safe.

“The DOE tells congress the river corridor is clean. It’s not clean but they are afraid of damages being filed against them.” A cancer survivor, Jim’s tribe received no compensation for damages from radioactive releases from 1944 to 1971 into the Columbia as high as 6,300,000 curies of Neptunium-239.

Steven G. Gilbert, a toxicologist with Physicians for Social Responsbility, tells IPS there is a lack transparency and data on the Hanford cleanup. “It is a huge problem,” he says, adding that contaminated groundwater at Hanford still interacts with the Columbia River, based on water levels.

Though eight of the nine nuclear reactors next to the river were decommissioned, the 1,175-megawatt Energy Northwest Energy power plant is still functioning

“Many people don’t know there is a live nuclear reactor on the Columbia. It’s the same style as Fukushima,” Gilbert explains.

In the middle of the fight are the tribes, which are sovereign nations. Russell Jim says they are often erroneously described as “stakeholders” when they are separate governments.

“We were the only tribe to take on the nuclear issue and testify at the 1980 Senate subcommittee. In 1982 we immediately filed for affected tribe status. The Umatilla and the Nez Perce tribes later joined.”

Yucca Mountain was earmarked by congress as a nuclear storage repository for Hanford and other sites’ waste but the plan was struck down by the president. Southern Paiute and Western Shoshone in the region filed for affected status.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico was slated to take waste from Hanford but after a fire in February, the site is taking no more waste. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has expressed concern about the lack of storage options.

The U.S. has the largest stockpile of spent nuclear fuel globally – five times that of Russia.

“The best material to store waste in is granite and the northeast U.S. has a lot of granite. An ideal site was just 30 miles from the capital, but that is out,” says Russell Jim with a wry smile, considering its proximity to the White House.

He does not plan to give up. “We are the only people here who can’t pick up and move on.”